Came across a very interesting idea on LibrarianInBlack.net, namely textcasting. Apparently Slate.com has started doing it, and in all honesty I really like it. With podcasting and screencasting, textcasting fits right in with the rest of the family. And it’s a much cooler name than “RSS.” :) I’ll start using it on my blogs.

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So I bit the (small) bullet and upgraded to the Basic plan on Backpack ($5/month). Hopefully 25 pages will be enough; we’ll see. The five that come with the free plan certainly weren’t, and things started getting crammed and I didn’t even use Backpack for several weeks because of it. But I think with more pages I’ll have enough room to stretch. We’ll see…

Technorati Tags: Backpack, 37signals

This morning I read How to Backup Your Mac Intelligently, and I realized that I’m a sitting duck right now. But not for much longer. There was a link to Jungle Disk in the comments (#16), and I realized that Amazon S3 is a really good and extremely cheap way for me to store my data. 15 cents a gigabyte per month is hard to beat. :) With six or seven gigs of pictures and 12 or so gigs of music, plus another gig or two of data, that’s only 21 gigs at 15 cents a month = $3.15 a month. Whoa. That’s cheap. I want to cry for joy. :)

So I’ve installed Jungle Disk and started copying stuff over. It’s working pretty well so far. The only thing I’m wondering about is the buckets — do you have to change the configuration every time you want to switch buckets? Because that’s annoying. I do like Jungle Disk’s integration with the OS X Finder, though. Now to see if I can find a web app that lets me get to my data from any computer, without having to install something like Jungle Disk…

Speaking of backups, I really ought to move my website development files into Subversion. (It would be so nice if Bluehost offered it…)

Technorati Tags: S3, Jungle Disk, Subversion, Bluehost

Garrett Dimon’s got a good post today, on interface design:

For me, I’ve found that by writing a paragraph or some bullet points, I come up with ideas I wouldn’t have otherwise. It also helps to expose oversights and logic errors. This only takes me about 30 seconds per feature, but it dramatically increases the amount of quality thought I put into its implementation. Any more than 30 seconds or a minute, and it’s a waste of time. Once it’s implemented, chances are you’re going to need to make other changes.

From the comments, I found this 37signals paper, An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design:

The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don’t think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.

There is a better way to manage this vast complexity than by making big decisions up front and hoping for the best. To make better sites — sites that are functional, beautiful, and “usable” — we have to break our design problems up into small independent chunks based on the real issues within our requirements. Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns.

And finally, Adobe Design Center has an interview with Jason Fried of 37signals on Getting Real:

Another thing I find interesting is that when big groups really want to get things done, they don’t make the group bigger, they make the group smaller. For example, when Lockheed wanted to design the Stealth [bomber], they didn’t scale up the team, they scaled the team down. When Congress really needs to consider something important, they form committees. When the military needs to conduct an operation with absolute precision, they usually call on the best small team they have. I think there’s a lot corporate America can learn from that.

For me, the main reminder I got was that you have to go to HTML (i.e., real stuff) as soon as possible, not getting caught up in mockups like I’ve done:

Yes, seeing and interacting with the real thing is the key. It’s not about seeing, it’s about using. You can see an Adobe® Photoshop® mockup of a site or application, but you can’t use a Photoshop mockup. That’s the point of Getting Real. To experience the real thing early and often. That’s the best way to improve the real thing. You can improve a Photoshop mockup all day long, but your customers don’t buy products or search or make a to-do list in a Photoshop mockup.

Granted, I’ve been doing HTML mockups as well, but I still think I’ve been spending way too much time on paper and in Photoshop. It’s about time to read Getting Real again…

Technorati Tags: Getting Real

iCryptex is a funny little satire on both the Da Vinci Code and Apple. I’ve already blogged about what I think of the Da Vinci Code, incidentally. And no, I don’t really care to watch the movie. (I’ve got to read through all those design patterns — no time for movies!)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Da Vinci Code, iCryptex

A while ago I discovered the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, but I didn’t really look into it (it was one of those put-on-the-shelf-for-future-reference things). Then I found Functioning Form, which is interviewing various interface designers right now. From there I checked the Yahoo library out again, and also found Jenifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces book and Martin van Welie’s UI Patterns and Techniques. This is really cool stuff — enough so that I’m going to read through it all as soon as I can, because I can already tell that it’s going to be extremely useful in designing Beyond. (For example, the collapse transition is a good way to keep information accessible but not in the way.) I’m excited. And schoolwork suffers another blow. :)

On a side note, I can’t wait till my library gets a copy of Edward Tufte’s new book, Beautiful Evidence. You can read the chapter on sparklines on his webboard.

Technorati Tags: design patterns, Edward Tufte

I think my iPod’s dying. In dog years it’s practically a centenarian (I bought it a year and a half ago), so it’s not too surprising. But it is sad. I wonder how much it’d cost to get it fixed… It’ll probably have to wait until later in the summer when I fix my PowerBook. (Though I’m thinking about possibly getting a MacBook or MacBook Pro instead — we’ll see.)

Technorati Tags: iPod, PowerBook, MacBook

I stumbled across a Google Jobs page a few minutes ago, intrigued by the 20% time idea. And from there I found An Inside Look at Google, an interesting video about what it’s like to work at Google. Dang it, I’d like to work at Google. :) I don’t necessarily see myself going in that direction — I’m going to become a librarian, and I’m not very interested in working for commercial entities — but if I did, Google would be where I’d want to work. (And in my mind it doesn’t count as commercial, because the services it offers — Google, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. — are free. That’s good.) Why? A great working environment, interesting people, fascinating problems, passion, quality, and so on. If only all places of employment were like that… ~wistful sigh~

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Finally started doing some Ruby coding today. I’m writing a pedigree parser that takes an XML pedigree and outputs it to HTML, and so the natural first step was to see what Ruby’s XML capabilities are. REXML is cool. I’ve done a fair amount of XML work in .NET at my job, and in spite of the differences, I was able to figure the basics out in a very short amount of time. That’s more a statement about how good Ruby and REXML are than it is one about my skill as a coder. :) Anyway, I seem to have heard about other XML libraries in Ruby (which makes me wonder if REXML has hidden deficiencies that I’m unaware of), but I won’t worry about those until I reach REXML’s limits.

And Ruby’s a delight to code in. I think I’ve grokked the block concept (myarray.each { |e| print e }, for example) and iterators and stuff like that. Now it’s just a matter of taking all those ingredients in my head and baking them into some real code. Then the mastery will start to come, and that’s when the real fun starts. I want to start coding DSLs (domain-specific languages) in Ruby, by the way… Mmm.

Can I just say that I love TextMate? Being able to run Ruby code straight from the editor (both via ⌘-R for the separate results window and through Control-Shift-E right in the editor window) is amazingly nice. Sure, other IDEs have that as well, but TextMate is delicious and fun to use.

Technorati Tags: Ruby, XML, REXML, TextMate

Found a nice collection of links to Ruby on Rails tutorials on Digital Media Minute: Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials.

Technorati Tags: Ruby on Rails